zlacker

>>brayth+(OP)
Is it possible to play Zork for the first time without a guide or manual of some kind? Could I fire up a copy today and dive straight in or do I need some external information?

Edit: and a follow-up question, is there a good Z-Machine interpreter for the macOS terminal?

>>neotek+zC
The Zork this post is about shouldn't have any copy-protection schemes requiring external resources, as this is the version which was on MIT computers. The commercial release may have had copy-protection in place.

Regardless of which you play, there are likely to be frustrating, unfair, perhaps unsolvable puzzles present. Modern players often have the Infocom invisiclues at hand while they do so.

>>kevinm+FH
The modern-ish Zorks (i.e. the ones available for a range of home computers, Zork 1/2/3, not mainframe Zork) can be done almost entirely without clues (and have no external frob based copy-protection). I remember vividly finally having to seek help in Zork 3, as the phrase "Hello, sailor" was not part of the typical 12 year-old's lexicon, but that was the only time I completely tapped out.

There are some pretty nutty things buried in the game, though - there's a spot in Zork 1 where by typing "temple" or "treasure" at the appropriate location you can teleport from one to the other - the supposed hint for this is they both have a granite wall. WTF?

I believe at the time, as a teenager, I finished most of the Infocom games available without using clues - it can be done. I think I never got the optimum outcome for Deadline.

I recently (this year) finished Starcross without hints or clues, aside from the copy-protection "map" at the start.

>>glangd+sR
> I finished most of the Infocom games available without using clues - it can be done.

IIRC, both Witness and Bureaucracy had physical stuff in the box that didn't look like copy protection, but without which it wasn't possible to finish the game - e.g. There was no way to figure out some things in Bureaucracy unless you read the included copy of "Popular Paranoia".

>>beagle+h23
Yup. Starcross was similar; I meant clues rather than copy-protection under another name. I played store-bought versions of these game (on my old Commodore 64) and never bought "invisiclues" so the line between these categories was quite clear. I don't recall what the medium of my final "tap out" in Zork 3 was - but recall being stuck for months and finally looking up the "hello sailor" bit.

This might not have been such a problem if I had played the Zorks in order, but I bought Zork 3 before Zork 1 because that was what they had in the shop. Otherwise I might have seen the verse in Zork 1:

"Oh ye who go about saying unto each, "Hello sailor", Dost thou know the magnitude of thy sin before the gods?"